What You Measure is What You Get.

Einstein :
Not everything that can be counted counts.
And not everything that counts can be counted.

About me.

I know enough to know that at 04.00am it gets dark out on the streets. It has done this for the last twenty odd years, to my knowledge and will probably continue for the forseeable future. At some stage in this ‘future’ I shall retire and probably won’t give a damn if it still gets dark at 04.00am. Until then I shall be out there, somewhere, lurking in the shadows because someone, somewhere will be doing stuff they shouldn’t and then, well then I will introduce myself. In the meanwhile I shall try to remain sane and remember why I joined in the first place and try to ignore all the people who piss me off by making the job more complicated than it should be.

Opinions

Any opinions contained in posts are mine and mine alone. Many of them will not be those of any Police Force, Police Organisation or Police Service around this country. The opinions are based on many years of working within the field of practical operational Police work and reflect the desire to do things with the minimum of interference by way of duplication for the benefit of others who themselves do not do the same job. I recognise that we all perform a wide range of roles and this is essential to make the system work. If you don’t like what you see remember you are only one click on the mouse away from leaving. I accept no responsibility for the comments left by others.

Recent Comments

C.T.C. Constabulary.

A Strategic Community Diversity Partnership.
We are cutting bureaucracy and reducing the recording of target and monitoring related statistics.
Our senior leaders will drive small, economical cars from our fleet surplus to save money to invest in better equipment for our frontline response officers.
We are investing money to reinstate station canteens for the benefits of those 24/7 response officers.
We have a pursuit policy. The message is that if you commit an offence and use a vehicle, we will follow you and stop you if necessary. It is your duty to stop when the lights and sirens are on.
We take account of the findings of the Force questionnaire and are reducing the administration and management levels and returning these officers to frontline response duties.
We insist on a work-life balance.
We have no political masters.
We are implimenting selection processes that take account of an individuals skills and proven abilities for the job. Our senior leaders will have one foot in reality and still possess the operational Policing skills they have long forgotton about and seldom used. All ranks are Police Officers first and specialists second.
We will impliment career development and performance evaluation monitoring of our leaders by those officers who operate under that leadership.
The most important role is that of Constable. All other roles are there to positively support the role and the responsibility of Constable and the duties performed.

Whichendbites

“We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising. It can be a wonderful method of creating the illusion of progress while creating confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.”......Petronius

Just so.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Reality.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Rank V’s Responsibility

Don't confuse your idea of how important you are with the responsibility of your role.

Meetings.

If you had to identify, in one word, why we will never achieve our full potential, Meetings would be that word.

There is always a bigger picture.

When there is no answer to your problem, there is always deflection from the need to justify giving an answer.

Sybil Dartington-Smythe was having a small bit of a problem with her dog. It appeared that her small love bundle had become quite unexpectedly snappy, bless its little heart.

The small, furry and delightfully bulbous eyed little darling had apparently snapped at her ladyship’s hand when she tried to lift the little hyphenated sweetheart into the rear of her landrover discovery onto its (and this is not a joke) quilted silk napping quilt. The little beastie simply would not enter the rear of the vehicle and she was simply far too distressed to lift tinkerbelle-hyphenated-fluffykins into the back of her vehicle. What was she to do ? She can phone her friendly officers at the CTC Constabulary, they have ‘people’ who deal with this type of thing. After all, this is an emergency. The unexpected but surprisingly convenient passing of a local unit returning to the supermarket of the upper-class masses to take yet another victim statement for the loss of another basket full of beef joints, large jars of coffee, some vodka and razorblades were assailed by the alleged mother of the dastardly vicious T-H-F. That detected crime completion will simply have to wait. There is an emergency taking place.

After a rather confused but still strange radio message, one of the people who deals with this sort of thing arrives to get the relevant info and the rather smug and eternally thankful local officers drive off to enter the store to find their witness to begin writing. The subtle innuendo of laughter masking their totally false concern etched on their faces and still haunts me, even to this day.

I see the very well tweed dressed Lady Sybil, as I call her, and the similarly arrogant thing masquerading as a dog. A small fluffy surrogate child of a thing with bulging eyes and more reminiscent of my daughters pyjama case than anything reminiscent of the canine form. This thing is overweight and in need of some serious exercise as well as a good slap to put it firmly into its place. The collar is fitting of our family cat. Now there is a picture of conceited arrogance if ever I saw it. Tinkerbelle-hyphenated-fluffykins will simply not move his sorry arse from the floor and her ladyships efforts to load it into the back onto the security of its quilted silk napping quilt (otherwise known as a car blanket) have failed big time. She has a small scratch and has reacted like it was some major amputation. She is simply distraught.

I suggest she continues to put her shopping into the vehicle whilst I help the hyphenated furry one into the area of her car I call the boot of said discovery with a cheery ‘hup’ followed by a ‘good dog’.

I take the dog out again, put it into a sit, avoiding the slow growl at bodily contact by a human of a far lower class than it. Another sharp tug and ‘hup’ and little fluffykins flies upwards into the area still known as the boot. Almost by accident this appears to have worked out well again and the thing goes into a sit, just in time to see mummy come to see how her little darling is.

‘Sit, good dog. Hup, good dog.’ Another small tug on the sparkly piece of string cunningly camouflaged as a leash and one little darling is safely up onto its luxury quilted napping quilt.

Lady Sybil is deranged with pleasure at her little darling’s new found athleticism and response skills. Typical of the gratitude I have come to expect, she gets into her discovery and drives off towards the exit, completely oblivious to the world that exists outside of her small metal & glass enclosure.

‘Thank you officer’ I shout after her, waving a cheery goodbye.

I am trying to work out exactly which one was the more spoilt, ungrateful and arrogant.

The names have been made up to protect the innocent, but probably reflect in a stereotypical way the names of the people involved have evolved. It was only a small tug on the leash I can assure you and probably the only form of discipline the dreadful little fluffykins has ever had to put up with.

May it rest in peace after dropping the largest and runniest load onto the thickest and most expensive carpet Lady Sybil has in her imaginary mansion. I suppose one of her staff would have to clean it up anyway.

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4 Responses

I sympathise with your having to deal with rude people and their ridiculous requests. It brought to mind a story of my grandfather from the early twentieth century. He was crossing the street in a small rural village to enter the post office when one of the local gentry arrived in her pony and trap and barked at him, “Hold the pony” in the plummiest accent. He walked on and she barked again with great indignance, “Hold the pony”. He went into the post office, posted his letter and emerged again. She barked at him apoplectically, “why didn’t you hold the pony?” He replied quietly, “I would have, if you’d had manners”, and walked on.